This one is even better!

My friend Holly sent me an even better picture of the hair--check it out! It wasn't curly at all until I turned 13 or so--then it just got progressively curlier. Where were hair straightening products back when I needed them? One time in college we actually ironed it out on the ironing board. Pretty soon after that it started getting straighter all on it's own.

The Hair

Back when I posted "Yearbook Yourself", I wrote a little about what my hair used to be like and how hard it was for me to deal with. I'm so glad those days are in the past! Of course, I'm thankful that I had hair in the first place, but it drove me nuts anyway : ). One of my buddies from St. Louis posted a picture of me on Facebook and I copied it here for those of you who wanted to see what it used to look like (unfortunately, I don't have a scanner). Keep in mind that this was on a GOOD hair day. Meet the hair:If I don't post here again before Thursday, have a great Christmas!

Family Pics by Little Wunders

As one of my Christmas gifts this year, the fam went to get pictures taken last Saturday. Our next door neighbor from our old neighborhood is a gifted photographer so we had her do the shoot. I would love to do an outdoor session sometime, but last Saturday was a blizzard so these were taken in her studio. Love them. There are more, but these are the only public ones for now:

You can check out her website at www.littlewundersphotography.com

It's Official----Blurb Rocks!

Yay! My book came today. I am totally pleased with the results. I chose the least expensive size, I think it's 7x7. I upgraded the binding some. It's a hard, imagewrap cover which comes with library binding. It ended up costing $35. I got lucky because they were offering free shipping at the time. The only thing I would change is the cover--I wish I had designed a better cover, but oh well.

Check it out--here's the front coverAnd the back cover:

And some of the inside pages (there are 100 pages):Here's my little project for today--neighbor gifts. I wasn't even sure I was going to do any neighbor gifts this year, but when I saw this on another blog somewhere I decided to try it. I dipped the marshmallows in a glaze made of powdered sugar and a bit of water. I scraped the excess glaze off and dipped the marshmallow in crushed candy cane. I'm handing them out with packets of hot chocolate. It was super easy, just what I needed.

Our San Diego Adventure

We just got back around 5pm today. Whew! What a long drive! San Diego was so fun though, it was totally worth the time in the car. We rented from Redbox a lot. We broke the drive up into 2 parts. We drove to Primm first, then the rest of the way on Friday.

The first thing we wanted to do was go to the beach. So, as soon as we checked into our room, we took off for Mission Beach. I LOVE the beach. It was pretty cold, but so fun. The kids were jumping in the water and discovering all of the cool things in the sand. They had never been to the ocean before, so seeing seaweed and waves for the first time was exciting.

That night we walked over to Old Town and looked in some of the shops (and bought some fudge--yum!). We had told the kids that they could each get a souvenir at some point on our trip, so they were very excited to look at all the things in the shops and scope out what they wanted to get.

The next morning we headed out to Point Loma. I was really looking forward to looking at the tide pools. When we got there it was still high tide, so we decided to wait and come back later that evening. This is what the area looked like before low tide: We drove to the old Point Loma lighthouse to check it out and enjoy the amazing views. Then we went back to Mission Beach where we bought sand buckets and shovels for the kids. We had a blast digging in the sand and combing the beach for interesting shells.

At around 3:30, the tide was low enough to look at the tide pools. It was pretty crowded because it was the weekend and the area closes at 4:30, so we didn't have a ton of time. This is the area that was totally covered in water in the last picture. There are all kinds of interesting little critters to find here. We loved it so much that we went back a second time before we came home.Lots and lots of hermit crabs and kelpy stuff

Lots of crabs hiding in the crevices of the cliff
We found some fish (can you spot him?)
He's in the middle of the photo, he's brown, and he's right above the horizontal blade of grass-like stuff.

I was excited to find this cool sea snail with some kind of plant growing on his back.

The next two days we went to Sea World. DH took this picture at the Shamu show--pretty awesome!
We all loved the dolphins, especially DS. I loved watching DH and the kids feed the seals (I was being the photographer). They were barking at us like crazy and the herons were sitting on the railing just waiting to steal a fish. One of them stole a fish that the kids had put in one of the upper holes. The seal just wasn't quick enough that time!DH and DS wanted to ride Journey to Atlantis. I really didn't want to because it was pretty cold outside, so getting wet didn't sound fun. They got on together and the girls and I waited where we could see the boats come by. DS didn't like it very much--he was pretty scared, poor guy. I snapped this picture as they passed us. Later on when I got a closer look at the picture and the look on his face, we all had a good laugh.
Our last night there, my old roommate Stefani (Auntie Stefani), came and picked me up and we went out to dessert. We had a great time catching up. We went to a place called "Decadent Desserts" and shared a slice of Triple Chocolate Mousse Cake and a Triple Berry Cobbler. Mmmmmmm. I also got to see her house and her twin baby girls (who were fast asleep and super cute). It was great girl bonding time. Thanks for the night out, Stefi-Bear!

In the morning before we headed out, we stopped at the La Jolla children's beach. It is a beach that was created for children with a giant wall constructed to protect the beach from the waves. However, the seals thought that sounded good too, and have taken over the beach. It's been that way for many, many years and is a contraversial subject with the locals. I asked a nice lady there where the children's beach was, and she told us where to find it. Then she said "It's not really for kids though, there's a bunch of seals there". I said that we knew that and wanted to go see the seals, and she (jokingly, but not really) said "I'd like to take a gun to those seals"! It was interesting. We loved watching the seals. Here's a picture of the whole area and a close up of a super cute seal that DH took with his camera (we weren't really as close as it seems).

This is a super long post! You probably feel like you took the vacation yourself!

Christmas Tag

I was tagged by Hollie at The Traylor Park Blog with this Christmas tag:

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags? I'd use all bags if everything fit in them
2. Real tree or artificial? Artificial
3. When do you put up the tree? Usually the week of Thanksgiving
4. When do you take the tree down? Between Christmas and New Years Eve.
5. Do you like eggnog? No. A sip or two is ok, but not anymore than that.
6. Favorite gift received as a child? My brother made me a doll house one Christmas--but it was for animals because I didn't like dolls. I was a tomboy.
7. Hardest person to buy for? My husband
8. Easiest person to buy for? Myself : )
9. Do you have a nativity scene? Yes--two of them. My mom buys us a new piece each year. This year I got the star backdrop to the Willow Tree set.
10. Mail or E-mail Christmas cards? Mail--in fact, I need to get some of your addresses so I can send one out to my blog friends, too.
11. Worst Christmas gift ever recieved? I plead the fifth
12. Favorite Christmas movie? Either "It's a Wonderful Life" or "A Christmas Story". They're so different, it's like comparing apples to oranges.
13. When do you start shopping for Christmas? In October. I'm pretty much done by Thanksgiving. It's just because I like to shop so much!
14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? No--I can't hold on to things I don't want for that long. We've given back some White Elephant gifts just to be funny. There are a few things that show up in the white elephant exchange each year--one is a framed picture of Kyle's face and another is a giant pair of underwear.
15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Mmmmm.....there are too many to name! I like to make a big breakfast Christmas morning with maple sausage and french toast.
16. Lights on the tree? Definitely. But only white ones, and not the blinking kind.
17. Favorite Christmas song? I'm not sure. I like the Hallalujah Chorus a lot.
18. Travel at Christmas or stay at home? Stay at home. But, we can get a little bored here all by ourselves, so this year I think we'll get tickets to that new Adam Sandler movie and go see that in the afternoon sometime.
19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? Dasher, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, Blitzen, Rudolph---not sure that's all of them.
20. Angel on the tree top or star? Star
21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning? I like to let the kids open one present on Christmas Eve--especially if we're just home for the evening.
22. The most annoying thing about this time of year? Feeling overscheduled.
23. Favorite ornament theme or color? I added a lime green ribbon this year to match my living room. The rest is gold and red. I like to go to Target the morning after Christmas to get really cute, cheap stuff for the next year.
24. Favorite for Christmas dinner? Lots of finger foods, like at my dad and stepmoms house when I was growing up. Wings, little smokies, dips (seven layer dip and dill dip in a bread bowl), and Christmas cookies for dessert!
25. What do you want for Christmas this year? I always pick out my own things--I like to. This year, I picked out a California King comforter set because the king sets are never wide enough to cover a king matress. We are also getting family pictures taken (we've never done it before--I'm so excited)!

I tag anyone who is looking for some blogging material!

Yearbook Yourself

You've got to try this--it's very entertaining : ) I found a website called Yearbook Yourself that shows you what your yearbook picture would have looked like from the 60's to the 90's. Check these out!

My hair was sooooo curly and fro-ey during high school that I probably would have gladly worn any of these hair-do's instead of my own! I'm sooooooo thankful that it changed during college and beyond and is now perfectly normal hair. Such a relief!

Anyway, I'm off to download my kids' pictures so I can see them with the funny hair-do's too!